I searched my mind for an explanation, but found none. “The Germans stopped me and I couldn’t find my Kennkarte,” I lied. “They wanted to know what I was doing. I was scared and I made up the excuse, I’m sorry.”

“What were you doing there?” she pressed. I had unwittingly walked right into her trap. “You had no business going to Dębniki again. And Fritz said the officers told him you were with a young man.” She paused, thinking. “It’s that awful boy again, isn’t it?” Ana Lucia’s lip curled with distaste. She had never liked Krys, considered his family far below us. It had always infuriated me.

But now I accepted the excuse she provided willingly. “Yes.”

“You need to stop chasing him around that filthy neighborhood. You’re not to go there again.”

“Yes, Ana Lucia,” I said, trying to sound duly chastened.

By agreeing with her too readily, though, I had overplayed my hand. Her eyes widened. “You’re up to something,” she said slowly, predator circling her prey.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied, willing my voice not to shake.

“Careful, little girl. You are playing a dangerous game and you are going to lose. This is my house now and you are only in it by my good graces. You know that, don’t you?” I did not answer, but finished my sausage in silence, then got up from the table. Feeling her eyes still on me, I tried to walk normally and forced my breathing to be calm as I left the room. Ana Lucia was suspicious, but she did not know about Sadie—at least not yet. I would have to be more careful.

As I started up the stairs, I noticed an envelope on the table in the foyer. It was addressed to me and I wondered when it had come, whether Ana Lucia had forgotten or deliberately neglected to give it to me. A letter from Paris, I realized, taking in the French stamps. Perhaps a birthday greeting from my brother. But the handwriting was not Maciej’s long, familiar looping script. I tore it open.

Dear Ella,

We have not met, but I’ve heard so much about you from your brother that I feel we have. I am your brother’s friend, Phillipe.

Friend, I reread the word. It was a euphemism, carefully censored code for so much more. I knew from Maciej’s earlier letters that he and Phillipe cared for one another deeply and it seemed a great pity that society did not permit them to acknowledge their feelings and call their relationship what it was. Quickly, I read on.

I’m afraid I write with the terrible news that Maciej was taken by the police during a raid of a cabaret we sometimes frequent.

My heart stopped. My beloved brother had been arrested.

There were rumors that the police might raid the cabaret and I begged him not to go out, but he would not be dissuaded.

Of course not. Maciej had always been stubborn and defiant—it was partly what had destroyed his relationship with my father and sent him fleeing to Paris in the first place.